R C Friedericks, or Rishi, lived in Asia most of his life, in India, Nepal and Hong Kong. Though born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he was in pre-communist China by the time he was a year old. His father, a doctor, took charge of a mission hospital in a coastal city called Yangjiang west of Macau. Within a couple years Mao’s China made staying in China difficult and the family went to India. By 1954 his father founded a mission hospital in Tansen, Palpa, Nepal. Rishi’s schooling was at Woodstock School, Mussoorie, in the Himalayan Mountains north of Delhi.
Rishi attended college in Spokane, WA for one year before moving to the San Francisco area where he attending three different colleges, the last being UC Berkeley during the time of anti-Vietnam War protests and the Black Panther movement. While in Berkeley he was accepted at the London School of Film Technique and moved to London.
Producing a film school documentary on Buddhism got Rishi interested in meditation. And so, besides studying film in London, Rishi began educating himself in spirituality. He met thinkers and practitioners of the time including Sangharakshita, Guru Maharaji, Alan Watts. The more he learned about Eastern spirituality, the more curious he became about early Christian spirituality. He read Eastern Orthodox literature, the beautiful poetry of St. John of the Cross, the writings of Meister Eckhardt, George Fox and many other Christian mystics. He was on a path to an Integral Spirituality that would later be articulated by Ken Wilber and Cynthia Bourgeault.
His career path has taken him from staff development and training at a state facility for the care and training of the developmentally delayed, to freelance artist in Ann Arbor, MI, and lumberjack/sawyer in the Florida Everglades. During this time he got married to Suzanne who was a classmate at Woodstock School. After their two sons were born they went to Nepal. Rishi trained Nepali artists and media producers to create health education and community development teaching materials and public service announcements for radio and television. His media centers in Pokhara and Kathmandu produced training and teaching videos and a wide variety of printed materials. They spent ten years in Nepal where their daughter was born.
Returning to the USA in 1991, Rishi and his family lived in Port Townsend, WA. In 2000, when their children were on their own, Rishi and Suzanne went to Hong Kong and taught at Hong Kong International School until 2014. The high school media courses Rishi taught included broadcast journalism, a film studies, introductory to video production, and Web design. He also taught meditation to teachers and students.
Rishi and Suzanne are now retired in Port Townsend, WA. Rishi enjoys painting, studying sacred geometry, photography, video production and writing. His first novel, Windhorse Warriors, was published by Niyogi Books in India in 2018 It is available in hardcover and e-book (Kindle) formats from Amazon.com or directly from Rishi.